Jackson and Tupelo already have traffic cameras in place; Columbus, Natchez and Southaven are in the process of starting to have cameras installed in their cities in MS. The cameras cannot be put on state owned highways without the permission of MDOT. MDOT denied permission because of liability,legal and security reasons.
Car wrecks in Jackson,MS have greatly decreased since the installation of the cameras at eight different intersections. More than half of the money goes out of state to the company that owns the cameras.
The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, states that 106,000 crashes, 89,000 injuries, and 1,036 deaths nationally were attributed to running red lights in 2000.
This author has received one of these tickets. I never run red lights. I do make airplane stops sometimes. I looked real close at the closeup picture of my license plate and guess what, you can see that my brake lights are in fact on. I guess my stop was not good enough for the camera. What I found amusing was the video of the camera. You can download a short clip and watch it after you download the software. It appeared to me that the video of the scene was a lot faster than the actual stop at the intersection. I wonder how and why that happened.
